Perhaps if Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty was among the 48,000 jammed into the Delaware Ohio State Fairgrounds last week, he would have a different opinion about his imminent death sentence to Ontario racing.

Maybe he would have seen a 23-year-old Ontario kid, son of a lifetime harness horseman, win the Little Brown Jug with the ride of his life behind three-year-old pacer, Michaels Power.

That kid, Scott Zeron, driving in his first Jug, steered the Ontario-bred colt with supreme calm and confidence, rewarding the faith in him from another star of the local racing scene, trainer Casie Coleman.

Driver, trainer and horse were all products of a provincial racing program that for the past decade has been the envy of the industry, the fruition of years of improving the breed thanks in many ways to the partnership between the Ontario government and many of the racetracks that now seem doomed.

If ever there was a poster day for the Ontario harness racing industry even in its darkest days, this was it, a triumph in pacing’s most storied event.

If you haven’t been to the Little Brown Jug in this rural Ohio town, you haven’t seen first-hand the grassroots appeal of the sport, the closest the standardbred game comes to the Kentucky Derby. The decline of standardbreds across North America has perhaps been more rapid than thoroughbreds, but the Jug has survived both the test of time and the challenges of an industry.

It is a race Canadians have embraced and had success in for decades, a fact not lost on Zeron, who knew how badly his father, Rick Zeron, has craved to win it throughout his carer. That he found the winner’s circle in his first drive only added to the magic of the moment and affirmed his status as one of the up and coming reinsman in the sport that has been under siege since McGuinty’s Liberals decided to end the slots at racetracks program earlier this year.

“The first thing I did in the winner’s circle was thank my dad, this one was for him,” Zeron said in an interview. “He always had it on his bucket list — this was the one race he had wanted.

“He told me that the second he crossed the were, he was in tears. He just lost it.”

When it was clear with a sixteenth of a mile that Michaels Power wasn’t going to be caught, Scott Zeron almost lost it in a different way. His fist-pump celebration before and after the wire captured the emotion of the moment as did the driver’s slow post-race victory lap to allow the fans to share in the performance.

While he admitted to pre-race jitters, Zeron didn’t show it on the track. Leaving from the rail in the second heat, he blitzed to the front before giving the colt a well-timed break to ensure there was plenty in reserve to finish off the gate-to-wire victory in 1:50.

“Most drivers get jitters in the morning, everyone knows the significance of this race,” said Zeron, who is battling veteran Jody Jamieson for the driving title on the competitive Woodbine Entertainment Group circuit. “You can’t think of it as any other race, I don’t care what anyone says. But when I got onto that track, the nerves just went away.

“Midway around the last turn, I knew I was going to win the race. I was smiling the whole way down the lane.”

As much as Zeron was full measure for the win, it was a huge victory for Coleman as well. Though she has won many of the sport’s biggest money events, the Jug was at the top of her bucket list as well. In Michaels Power, a horse who had dominated on the Ontario Sires Stakes circuit, she saw a young pacer who was exceptional on the tighter turns of a half-mile track and made sure he was ready to fire on Jug day.

“It speaks volumes of her capabilities,” Zeron said. “She made it clear to me from the beginning of the year that the Little Brown Jug was the one race that she hadn’t won that she absolutely needs to. She felt this was the first time she had a real contender.”

Born, bred, raised and trained right here in Ontario and ridden by a young pro who learned the game on many of the province’s smaller tracks.

What a shame it would be if future generations, both human and equine, are denied the opportunity because of politics gone bad.